27 April 2015

2nd House in Astrology & Self-Worth

In astrology, the second house rules wealth, both material and non-material. It's often over simplified as "the house of money and finances". In reality though, that is just the superficial, material expression of it. It actually shows our feeling of being rich in general, a feeling of wealth, which is not necessarily linked to money. The 2nd house shows both financial and personal resources, such as talents and confidence. Its our sense
of worthiness and richness. Both the "I'm worth it" sense of it in material and sensual terms but also a deeply rooted sense of self-worth as a person.When this part within us is strengthened, we will feel secure, safe and stable, it creates a sense of self-worth that is not easily shaken from outside influences and opinions.

Shadow Aspect

If we lack self worth we might compensate through the opposing 8th
house, which is that of secrets and power. We will tend to be secretive and
private because we fear vulnerability and that once somebody sees us for who we
are they’ll decide that we‘re not worthy. But we have to build this
foundation of a sense of self-worth independent of others so that we never have to seek
approval. Through the 8th house
we might also try and control or manipulate others or even put them down, to feel better about ourselves in turn. The opposing house on the upper hemisphere can always show the shadow aspect of the one on the lower hemisphere.

Worth as a personal decision

It's very
weird how studying astrology can teach you so many lessons about life. By studying the 2nd house I realized that worth is not an inherent
quality we can or cannot have. The 2nd house rules anything that we
see value in personally. That’s why it's often called the house of money,
because money is this collective value exchange tool. It's this agreed upon
thing with which you can trade basically. For example, I give you money and in
return you'll give me a haircut or I'll give you money and in return you give me
an apple.
But money is just paper or numbers, it has no inherent value other
than the symbolic one we attach to it. It’s the same with self-worth. Realize
that worthiness is not an inherent quality someone can or cannot have. It's all
personal, subjective interpretation, just a concept in our heads. So when you,
in your head, can decide that you're not worthy, you can just as much decide
that you are. It's not a quality inherent in you, it's just a decision you make.
We have to claim it. Worthiness is more so a decision than it is a trait.

It’s the same
with everything else. A car can be super expensive but of no real worth to
someone who can't drive it. A photograph can be worth not even a single cent to
someone while to somebody else that’s their biggest treasure. So in the 2nd
house we also have to learn to treasure ourselves.

Body Image

The 2nd house is in the first quadrant, that of the body. It shows our attachment of the identity to the body, so it also deals with body image issues.

I think it's very important to understand that your whole
body is working for you, your immune system protects you, your heart is
pumping, your whole body is doing the best to its abilities to keep you alive
and healthy. Even if you just put your hand on
your heart and feel it beating you have to realize – it's pumping
blood through your body literally 24/7, just to keep you alive! Your whole body
loves you so much. So you should love it back. Even if you cant say “I love
myself” and mean it, you can still say something like “I appreciate the way my
body works for me.” And that’s a first
step to loving your body.

If youre in
a really negative feeling state about yourself, when you have a really hard
time loving yourself or finding self-worth just think about how, from a purely
logical perspective, if you weren’t meant to be here, to be alive, to have some
sort of mission or a message to share, if you were purposeless and worthless –
would the whole system of your body work so hard to keep you alive? Osho once
said that the whole of existence accepts you the way you are, except yourself.

And I think
that when somebody struggles with their body image, they should never try and
lose weight because they hate their body. You should never punish yourself with
exercise that you hate or restrict yourself from food. Even if you're not yet in
a place where you think you're beautiful, again, be really practical about it and
just say something like “I appreciate that my body works for me, keeps me alive
and healthy” and then give back to it, out of respect for that, eat fruits,
because you want to, because your body deserves it. And then you can work
yourself up. No one can make a 180 turn to self love, it’s a slow process, and
its all about little steps.

Your inherent value

Chances
are when you're reading a blogpost like this or have been trying to become a
better human being in general, if you’ve been working on yourself, just the
fact that you try, that you care, that you make an effort – that makes you so
worthy. Its just ridiculous to think
that someone who tries so hard to become better in all possible ways, who wants
to learn to love themselves and who wants to love other people would be
worthless or not deserving of that love. I also think that we tend to see how it
makes sense for everybody else that they're worthy no matter what but then we
struggle to believe that about ourselves.

Another
important thing to remember is that you are unique, that no one exactly
like you has ever existed or will ever exist after you. So you add something to
this universe, a unique perspective, no one could write the exact words you
could write or paint the same painting. You have something to give to this
world nobody else could give in the same way, so don’t waste it. If you were
meant to be different, you would be different. I think that for religious
people its very helpful to remember that god doesn’t make mistakes. And even
just astrologically, the whole blue print of your personality and life is in
your astrological chart. You were designed to be exactly the way you are, the
whole universe conspired to create you as this unique expression of the cosmos.When you understand you chart and you
know all your weaknesses but understand why you have them, where you are coming
from, it becomes very easy to accept all parts of you.

Other people's influence on your self-worth

This is also the house of inheritance: What we
inherit on a physical or financial level but also the values, beliefs, traditions and
rituals that are passed on to us. It shows the sense of self worth that we are taught, and self worth
issues pretty much always stem from your early childhood, from the beliefs
about yourself you have picked up from your parents or even other close
relatives. This is where stuff like daddy issues come in when you didn’t feel
like your dad gave you a lot of attention and love and you then try and make
another person who subconsciously represents your father love you, to win them
over for you.And I know that a lot of parents can be awful with bullying their
own children, attaching their worth to their grades in school or even the way
they look. But you need to realize that worth and value is a subjective and
personal thing that we attach to something, not an inherent quality. You are so
worthy and your parents inability to show it to you does not decrease your
value. No matter who treats you badly, it has nothing to do with you
personally,its just others very subjective projections. If someone doesn’t like
something about you it ALWAYS means that its something theyre insecure about in
themselves. Peoples reactions to you and treatment of you only ever reflects
something inside those people and their inability to love you does not mean
that you are unlovable.

Even if being worthy makes sense to you in your head, logically, its still a whole different thing to believe it with your heart. And there is no point in repeating affirmations that you don’t believe such as “I love myself” or “I am beautiful”. It will just feel wrong to lie to yourself. And the fact that you cant believe it will make you feel even worse. Instead say “I don’t love myself and that’s okay” or “I don’t think im beautiful and that’s okay”. Make peace with the fact that this is a process. And celebrate baby steps.

This post is quite long, I hope you enjoyed it though!! Another blogpost about what each planet in the second house means will follow! :-)

Thank you so much for this post. It was healing, enlightening and simply heart opening for me.

I'm currently doing a clean sweep of my negative beliefs about money but my self-worth is closely tied to it as well so I'm also working on that too. I know that I have the super conjunction in capricorn in my second house and not being savvy in astrology, it was very confusing to me on what it meant.

But I do know that the topic of money and my own self-worth is, honestly, a very hard thing for me being that I grew up with the messages that I'm undeserving, not good enough and etc. It took many years to come to the point where I was able to shift my personal negative beliefs about money but I still have the beliefs that OTHERS put on me that run much deeper to deal with.

Even though I really LOVE money, I felt disempowered to have it, felt that I was undeserving because I didn't work hard for it and that I wasn't knowledgeable enough to make money and control it.

However, hearing about your perspective on self-worth and it's our "personal viewpoint" of wealth, worth and etc that makes it so takes the power away from my family (and society) that made me feel bad about it. And finally puts the control back into my own hands so that I can create the wealth the way I see fit both internally and externally.

Even though it's pretty clear that I have a lot of energy in the second house (saturn,uranus and neptune all conjunct with each other and having aspects to my other planets) I feel now that I'll be able to manifest the positive and POWERFUL energy that those planets brings, now that I'm able to let go of what others told me I was.